Sonic Youth

★★★ In/Out/In THREE LOBED. CD/DL/LP

Rare and unheard exploratory jams from New York noiseniks’ final decade. As the mirage of a postNirvana commercial crossover dissipated, Sonic Youth embarked upon a vision-quest, emancipating themselves from the strictures of traditional song-writing and (re)discovering the magic of jamming. This approach yielded some of their most beloved late-era albums (Murray Street; Sonic Nurse),

and also their most-reviled (New York City Ghosts And

Flowers). Collating errata and obscurios from 2000-2010,

In/Out/In juggles motorik chugging, flashes of inspiration and passages of inscrutable din. Social Static’s aimless amplifier hum slots firmly in the latter category, but much of the rest electrifies: Basement Contender’s blissful wanderings, In & Out’s gently simmering single-chord reveries, and the epic, hurtling squall of Out & In (an early version of Pattern Recognition). As with their self-released SYR series, the thrill lies in eavesdropping on experiments-in-progress, and as much in the quest itself as in the flashes of genius that occasionally arise.